Steve KelseyThere can be little doubt that we are seeing a deliberate and very stealthy restructuring of our society. This has been underway from before the Thatcher and Reagan years that saw the first surfacing of the hard-right agenda. This move was accelerated profoundly by the 2016 elections in the USA and the UK. The election of Tump in the USA and Brexit in the UK are just another step on the path that was largely unplanned but, having happened, was seized as an opportunity to accelerate this restructuring.
Their objective it to move society away from democratic norms towards a new hyper-capitalism. This is a very peculiar form of capitalism that promotes monopolies in industry and the concentration of power and money in the hands of a few. This is not at all what you would expect from the dynamics of a free market model. As evidence you only have to look at the US healthcare system where efficiency, choice and cost effectiveness are far from evident.
In a sense this drift is a return to a Britain we have forgotten. Before WW1 and WW2 inequality and a capitalist dominated society was the norm. Following those wars the population rebelled against the old order and made significant gains. Wages increased, working hours were reduced and legislated, state pensions were introduced, the NHS was founded. This was complete capitulation by the old order in the face of a politicised and angry population. Who was going to argue with over a million trained killers returning from war?
This social-democratic momentum lasted until Thatcher, who championed a mindset that was far closer to the pre-war norm. The Thatcher revolution had resonances in unexpected places-including a working class who were won over by the promise of home ownership and higher wages. And it is possible this rebalancing was required. Certainly the result of Thatcherism, including the repositioning of a very left leaning Labour party to Blairs middle ground, is remembered as delivering two prosperous decades for the majority of people. But the pendulum has lost none of its momentum.
We are now living in a time where the hard right feel released by Trump in the USA and Brexit in the UK. Both results were created by the complacency of the past two decades when the genuine suffering of large groups of the population were ignored. This neglect made allies of the far right and the previously disenfranchised and formed a powerful block impervious to facts and logic because the right have their own facts and logic and everything to win.
So now the far right are free to manipulate facts and seize the powers they want to create the neofeudalism they desire.
We have a problem.